Crowded Classrooms

Special emphases and upgraded recruitment portend growth for Christian colleges.

According to a new survey of college enrollment released last December by six higher education groups, college enrollment held its own in 1984, contrary to all the predictions that significant declines would take place.

There were two main reasons for the predictions of a decline.

First was a projected decrease in the number of traditionally college-age students in the nation’s total population. According to Oscar T. Lenning, vice-president for academic affairs and academic dean at Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester, New York, that decrease is as high as 40 percent or more in some parts of the country. In 1984 the number of students in high school nationwide declined by 5.3 percent.

Second, the costs of a college education, particularly in the private sector of higher education, have been spiraling. The cost of a four-year program in a private liberal arts college today can easily amount to more than $40,000. John L. Glancy, director of university relations at Seattle Pacific University in Washington, notes that “from 1980 to 1983 family income rose 20 percent, but private college costs rose 40 percent during the same period.”

But the predictions of decline did not come true. Why?

The reason is that, knowing the facts of a declining pool of students and spiraling costs, colleges have upgraded their recruitment efforts by attracting large numbers of older students. As a result, though the number of full-time, first-time freshmen in the 18-to 24-year-old category declined by 2.85 percent (according to a report in the Dec. 20, 1984, issue of USA Today), total enrollment is up by 0.65 percent at public universities and colleges and down only 0.88 percent at private institutions of higher education. Though public two-year junior and community college enrollment declined 2.19 percent, older college graduates swelled the ranks of graduate schools with an 8.9 percent increase in enrollment.

In addition, the signs of future enrollment are especially promising for evangelical colleges. Enrollment in evangelical secondary schools has increased notably—at a rate one official calls “nothing short of phenomenal.”

It is still too soon to say what impact this increasing enrollment will have on future enrollments in evangelical Christian colleges, but all signs are that large numbers of those students will eventually enroll in Christian colleges, thus increasing their student pool.

The Christian College Today And Tomorrow

Ronald G. Johnson, who is vice-president of Malone College, Canton, Ohio, a Christian liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Friends Church-Eastern Region, points out that the evangelical Christian college as we know it is a relatively recent development and largely an American phenomenon. “Many of today’s evangelical Christian colleges can trace their roots to the Bible college movement of late nineteenth-century America or to church or denominational academies,” he notes.

“It is true that many of the oldest private colleges and universities in this country were once Christian and even evangelical, but I would argue that both the circumstances of their founding and the later demise of their Christian emphasis place them in a different category from the evangelical Christian colleges of today,” Johnson says. Today’s evangelical colleges, by and large, have maintained close ties to their supporting denomination or other sponsoring evangelical bodies.

Johnson is also impressed by the numbers of graduates of Christian colleges who are now actively involved in the leadership of the burgeoning evangelical churches of the country. “When I look over the congregations of our churches and see Malone graduates, I am impressed. I once remember counting—during the time of meditation, not during the sermon!—those on the platform and in the choir of Canton First Friends Church who were Malone graduates, faculty, or staff. I was pleasantly surprised to find that more than two-thirds of the folks fell into one of those three categories.”

He sees the strength of evangelical Christian schools in four areas: smallness, mission, integrated instructional program, and an unusually dedicated faculty. Though smallness is not unique to the evangelical college, small classes and increased opportunities for student and faculty interrelationships are a distinct advantage. “For example,” Johnson says, “the chance of becoming a student leader on a campus of 500 is obviously much greater than on a campus of 50,000.”

Even Christians sometimes think that Christian higher education is biased and therefore inhibits freedom of inquiry. That is not so, according to Malone’s vice-president. “A secularist might argue that Christian higher education, with Christ at its center and its belief that all truth is God’s truth, is biased. The fallacy in this argument is that it fails to recognize that everyone, whether he realizes it or not, brings a bias to education. A secular humanist, a Communist, or an agnostic each interprets the world through a particular bias. In a Christian college a student will be introduced to both secular and orthodox Christian thought. It is then the function of students and professors to recognize the secular thought that is Christian and that which is not. In a secular system, essentially only secular thought is explored, and there is no outside reference point by which to evaluate the ideas.”

The buzz words of higher education for the eighties and nineties are “integration of curriculum,” “value added,” and “global awareness.” Because Christian colleges have been working for years to integrate Christian faith and the truth of the various disciplines, Johnson feels, “Christian higher education is in the lead and can show the way.”

Christian College Innovations

How distinctive are evangelical Christian colleges in the United States, and how are they facing the unique problems of the last decade-and-a-half of the twentieth century? The 67 members of the Christian College Coalition, an organization of leading evangelical Christian colleges and universities, were asked about the distinctives and futures of their institutions. Thirty-three academic deans, vice-presidents, or their designated representives replied. Their carefully nuanced answers reveal that the leadership of the evangelical college is in the hands of those whose Christian commitment and administrative expertise have melded in an ideal way.

Distinctives Of Some Leading Evangelical Colleges

The college deans listed a wide variety of distinctives. The following is not intended as a comprehensive catalog but as indication of the diversity among evangelical schools.

Robert Baptista, dean of Trinity College in the northern Chicago suburb of Deerfield, wrote, “My conviction is that you could interchange the college names in most current advertisements for Christian colleges and no one would ever know the difference. I will skip over the usual observations about Trinity College, therefore, and suggest what makes us different.”

One thing that makes Trinity College distinctive is its employment opportunities for students. “Our location in the affluent North Shore of Chicago offers abundant employment opportunities for Trinity students. Each year the students’ employment office receives over 3,500 requests for a wide variety of part-time employment opportunities. I know of no Christian college that has more work opportunities available to students in the surrounding neighborhood.”

Robert B. Fischer, provost and senior vice-president of Biola University, saw the uniqueness of his institution in its total program. “Each baccalaureate program includes a 30-unit program in biblical studies and theology, a general education program, and a major selected from the 24 that are offered. Fourteen master’s degree programs and five doctoral programs are provided. While each single feature of this university may be found in isolation or in some form elsewhere, Biola University is uniquely distinctive in that the entire campus and all of the students are enriched by the full resources of the baccalaureate and postbaccalaureate work of the four schools, the School of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, the School of Intercultural Studies and World Missions, the Rosemead School of Psychology, and the Talbot Theological Seminary and School of Theology.”

Jean B. Kim, academic dean of Eastern College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania, saw that school’s “open evangelicalism” as its distinctive characteristic. “Eastern College has in common with other evangelical schools a firm commitment to the lordship of Christ. We feel that we accept and encourage student and faculty diversity in the expression of this commitment, perhaps to a greater extent than some other evangelical colleges.” This openness is expressed in its doctrinal statement as well. Though all faculty members annually sign a doctrinal statement that includes belief that the Bible is “inspired of God and is of supreme and final authority in faith and life,” non-Baptist faculty members are not required to subscribe to the statement regarding the preference of water baptism.

One of the distinctives of North Park College, Chicago, Illinois, according to vice-president and dean Quentin D. Nelson, is that it “is one of very few evangelical colleges to be located in an urban center, thus being able to take advantage of the rich cultural and educational resources available for its curriculum, as well as abundant clinical sites for nursing, teaching, and other programs such as internships.”

John L. Glancy, director of university relations at Seattle Pacific University, singled out its size as one of its distinctives. “Seattle Pacific is one of the largest evangelical Christian colleges in America. Total undergraduate and graduate enrollment is 2,869. We serve over 18,000 students through the state per year in a continuing education program called SPIRAL, and our summer session is heavily promoted and well attended, with 1984 enrollment at 2,925, eclipsing enrollment for any one quarter during the regular academic year. Graduate and nongraduate degree seekers make up the majority of the students.”

In a day when many liberal arts colleges pride themselves on their refusal to succumb to the call of “vocationalism,” Stanley A. Clark, dean of academic affairs at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, is proud of the unique twist his institution has given to the question. “We offer a Christian liberal arts perspective on some decidedly vocational programs, such as agriculture, computer science, teacher education, social work, and business/accounting. We have also linked ourselves with top-quality study programs elsewhere, such as environmental biology through the AuSable Trails Institute in Michigan and the American Studies Program in Washington, D.C. Our cooperation with the six-member Associated Colleges of Central Kansas enables us to offer full majors in special education and computer science.”

One of the most interesting replies came from Oscar T. Lenning (vice-president for academic affairs and academic dean at Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester, New York). During the first year of a new administration, Roberts Wesleyan obtained a large five-year grant from the federal government that allowed it to develop a unique learning center. Other unusual features of the school include a new VAX-750 central computer and sophisticated peripherals solely for instructional use that give the college a “state-of-the-art computing capability.” There is also a new general education program, six new academic majors, a market research capability, an increased donor research and public relations capability (that last spring resulted in an award for promotional excellence for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education), and an innovative career planning and placement program that now includes an interactive computer information system. In addition, the team introduced a number of other creative pilot projects with the support of an enthusiastic faculty willing to make necessary changes.

As a result, the school has already seen enrollment increase from 600 to 700 students, despite the fact that it has tightened its admissions standards markedly.

Important Religious And Philosophical Beliefs

Several college deans spoke of the theological distinctiveness of their institutions. Don Grant, vice-president of academic affairs at Azusa (Calif.) Pacific University emphasized that “we are a distinctively Christian university, drawing from a rich heritage of Wesleyan, evangelical Christian commitment.

Zenas J. Bicket, academic dean of Evangel College, Springfield, Missouri, noted that the Assemblies of God college “provides a liberal arts education for mainstream Pentecostal youth.” Similarly, Southern California College, Costa Mesa, California, lists its Pentecostal emphasis as a distinctive. “The college is known for its commitment to evangelical theology and charismatic experience,” according to academic dean Lewis Wilson.

John N. Oswalt, president of Asbury College, Asbury, Kentucky, wrote, “Among those colleges that would emphasize Wesleyan-Arminian beliefs with an emphasis upon Christian holiness, Asbury is the only independent school. All others are denominationally affiliated.”

Richard C. Detweiler, president of Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary, Harrisonburg, Virginia, commented that “with roots that reach back into the 450-year-old Mennonite heritage, the college is responsible to the Mennonite church to provide a liberal arts education from an Anabaptist perspective.”

Martha Stout, director of public relations at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts, noted that Gordon was founded as a missionary training institute with a particular burden for the Belgian Congo. Though she admits that the liberal arts college of today has expanded its mission, “Gordon has never lost its moorings; we remain globally aware.”

Problems Facing The Evangelical College In The Future

The academic leaders of these Christian colleges saw a number of problems facing the orthodox Christian institution of higher education in the remaining years of the present century.

John Oswalt of Asbury College commented, “On the one side are the pocketbook issues. Will evangelicals be willing and able to pay for the kind of education in which we have said for many years that we believed fervently? Or will our colleges become upper-middle class and lower-upper class finishing schools? A second issue is whether we will become captive to an upwardly mobile affluent segment of society and lose our capacity to speak to the needs of the age from a clearly biblical perspective. As a whole, evangelicalism today is becoming increasingly blurred on the issue of Scripture and scriptural ethics.”

Don Grant of Azusa Pacific University focused on the pressures to stray from the Christian college’s statement of mission and purpose, and either to cut quality for economic reasons or face the possibility of pricing itself out of existence.

Kenneth W. Shipps, dean of faculty at Barrington (R.I.) College, saw as the central problem “the lack of preparation for incoming students in writing, math, and scriptural understanding.”

Karl E. Keefer, vice-president of academic affairs at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, saw the major issues as how to maintain commitment to an uncompromising allegiance to biblical standards of faith and life in the face of an increasingly secularized society, how to maintain a solid liberal arts curriculum in the face of the trend toward the tyranny of technology, and how to maintain enrollment in the face of demographic decline in the pool of available students.

Richard Gross, president of Gordon College, feels that “though strong colleges like Gordon, Calvin, Wheaton, and Westmont will endure, a number of smaller Christian colleges with declining enrollments will soon fall.” The challenge to the strong colleges, however, is whether they are going to be content with “merely holding abstract philosophic discussions within their academic enclaves,” or whether they will “risk taking public stands on a whole range of pressing social and ethical issues, thereby providing intellectual, moral, and spiritual leadership for our constituents and the larger church.”

A different problem was the focus of the remarks of David G. Ondercin, vice-president of academic affairs at Northwestern College in Roseville, Minnesota. “We need to be ever vigilant in the protection of our rights under the law from the encroachment of federal law and bureaucracy. As an institution we do not accept state or federal monies and therefore enjoy freedoms and benefits many other institutions may not.”

In a similar vein, John L. Glancy of Seattle Pacific University saw government regulations as a major issue facing the Christian school. “Currently we are involved in more than one legal challenge to our policy of reserving the right to hire Christian employees. Should these lawsuits that are being brought about by certain applicants rule in their favor, all Christian organizations, not only Christian colleges, would be affected by the ruling,” Glancy observed.

Oscar Lenning of Roberts Wesleyan College mentioned that though studies show that the liberal arts or general education graduate is more effective and more successful over time than the professionally trained graduate, job supervisors who do the hiring still seem primarily concerned with vocational preparation. “The issue is ‘How can we communicate effectively to companies and those supervisors the results of such studies that point out the shortsightedness of these hiring practices?’ ”

Stanley Clark of Tabor College noted another pressure. “A major issue facing us is competition with community colleges that forces us to consider the extent to which we, too, should become brokers of educational services rather than a legitimate liberal arts college.”

Quo Vadis?

Will these schools, which are representative of hundreds of other Christian colleges all over the nation, survive the challenges of the coming years? No one, of course, can say for certain.

If these leaders and their comrades in constructive administration at similar Christian colleges can continue to offer distinctive programs and creative teaching emphases, if they can keep their Christian convictions from being only on the doctrinal tablets of stone and instead buried deep within the hearts and minds of faculty members and students alike, the Christian college should continue to make a major and increasing impact on American life.

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